I'm down to answer any questions about or development process, the industry in general, or whatever. I reserve the right to not answer questions about anything I deem too personal or confidential.

I will not answer questions about Rampart.

1 horse sized duck.

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Use Discount Code: REDDIT for 10% off Cases and Cooling at the Corsair.com webstore for today and tomorrow only. Discounts applied at checkout.

EDIT: Okay guys that's all for me tonight. I'm going home to the fam. Thanks for the great questions and such. we'll check in periodically if there's interest.

Yep. Employee purchase is nice. Also, sometimes we have "clean out the lab days" where you go through the dozens of old motherboards, processors, cases, power supplies, etc, and pick stuff you want to take home.

I've built a few systems out of those parts. Some of them are pretty good for free.

That kit is very special, it is really that price because it is the fastest ram you can buy. It is a 16GB kit 4x4GB of 2800MHz which only ultra enthusiasts and overclockers use. The kit is that expensive because less than 1% of ICs can actually do that speed. There are 64 individual memory ICs in that kit at meaning in order to get those 64 ICs we needed to test 6,400+ memory ICs to build one kit. They are pretty much hand made except for the placing of components on the PCB.

Hey guys I am Jake Crimmins, I’ve been with Corsair for 3 years now and I am a Technical Marketing Specialist. I’ve been an enthusiast for the past 14 years and have been doing extreme overclocking for the past 11. Unlike George I will only answer questions about Rampart.

I swear this is a true story. I went to a high school in LA and you crashed our prom after party (Universal Hilton). You ended up taking the virginity of a girl named Roseanna. You didn't call her afterwards. She cried a lot. Do you remember any of this and can confirm or have you been so knee deep in hollywood pooty for so long that this qualifies as a mere blip?

1 - We just announced the 900D, which is pretty awesome. There are always new and interesting things in the case market, but I can't talk about roadmap stuff until it's closer to launch. We're looking very closely at form factors and usability.

2 - A lot actually. Over the last 3 years, with SLI and Crossfire being much more effective and Eyefinity and multi-monitor gaming picking up significantly, we've seen high-end rigs put out a lot more heat, and GPU coolers tend to just shove that heat right into the case. It's a big challenge to design an airflow path that's efficient for both blower style and radial style GPU coolers.

3 - I love it. I had no professional background aside from being an overclocker/builder when I got hired, but since then I earned an Advertising Degree. I started in the lab as a memory tester. "This stick goes 271 Mhz. This stick goes 273 Mhz. This stick goes 280 Mhz." etc. Worked my way through and upwards a bit.

The way you describe the lab work sounds a little boring really. I'm studying electrical engineering and quite a bit of electronics. Is there anything more challenging going on at corsair or is it all a bit like that?

You should remember that in any lab, from computer science to astrophysics -- you almost always start out with the more "technician" positions ( A scientist does it once, an Engineer does it 10 times and a technician does it 10,000 times).

I cannot say what he is mentioning doesn't sound laborious but I am sure it was mixed in with potential some other odd jobs, not to mention you need vision (you aren't going to test memory forever).

It takes time to progress and you have to learn to crawl before you can run. I can tell you this though, I bet lab technicians doing memory testing are making more *money than biologists in some lab processing pipeline (who often have the very same laborious work outlines -- culture culture culture).

Yes, I love working in this industry (and at Corsair). I was recruited by Corsair just before the first .com bust from Atipa (a Linux HPC clustering company, we designed systems for universities and national labs). I was (and continue to be) an enthusiast.

When I started at Corsair we were still primarily a server memory company and I was hired to help develop and promote our new line of unbuffered performance SDRAM.

I have no formal education (read college) and consider myself to be incredibly lucky to have landed the position I did and to have worked for so long (as Jake mentioned, it's common practice to bounce around in this industry) in an environment with other like-minded people. =)

Since George answered the first two I will reply to the third. I love working at Corsair it has been one a great experience. You will find that most of the employees have been here for 5+ years. That is just something that is unheard of in this industry. I started out just like you guys an enthusiast who got obsessed with overclocking. Eventually got into extreme overclocking and landed a job at a GPU/Motherboard manufacturer. I left there after a few years and came to Corsair.

I can't comment on unannounced products, but there are lots of inherent issues with this. One of which is that you'd need a pretty significant radiator to cool both a CPU and GPU, as a GTX 680 puts out around 180-200 watts of heat, or 50-100% more than the CPU does.

Not to mention all the challenges in the different mounting brackets and such.

EDIT - since Mr. Polite below me has called me out, I define "significant radiator" as more than a thin, 240mm rad with push-only fans.

Cooling a 120W CPU and a 180W GPU, neither of which is overclocked, is feasible but not recommended. Overclock either one and you up that heat output up to 50-75%. That's just unwise.

We can't talk about unannounced product since as far as I know we're still technically pre-IPO but I can offer my personal opinion.

I think something like this might be possible IF you had a large enough radiator AND you didn't serialize the pump heads. I'm not sure it'd be a feasible product though as you'd still need to cool other components on the video card besides the GPU itself...

1 - Mini ITX is a strange beast and we're still at the front edge of its popularity. Intel has some new ideas this year with a variant of it, so we'll see how it goes. Personally I like Mini ITX but a lot of the Mini ITX cases are basically huge. For real innovation to occur we need Mini ITX form factor PSUs and GPUs. Basically a 1/2 scale ATX spec. Low-profile gaming GPUs and 400-500W high-efficiency PSUs in small form factors. Right now, you're limited to power bricks or SFX-style PSUs of questionable quality.

2 - Yes, we've looked into this before.

3 - Nope. Air coolers are much less expensive than water coolers, so you'll always have stuff like the CM Hyper 212 out there. The high-end aircoolers also have their place, but I think that customers are voting with their dollars that they'd rather add a bit of noise for an H100i than deal with a huge 3lb hunk of aluminum and copper that takes up half the inside of their case. I know the hardcore guys don't like our products and vote for the D14 or the Phanteks stuff instead, but I think the sales speak for themselves. People want access to their RAM, 8-pin CPU power socket, top and rear fans, etc, without having to remove their cooler.

Quite a while ago I posted on the Corsair forums suggesting that you should start making mouse pads. I mentioned I had a lot of Corsair peripherals and my Razer mouse pad was spoiling it. A lot of people came into the thread and agreed with me.

For bragging rights, can you tell me if that post influenced the outcome that was you starting to offer mouse pads?

We have lots of different groups - technical marketing, technical support, engineering, etc.

The most important facet you need to have are passion and willingness to learn new things. If you care about doing a good job and you want to learn more, you're like 2/3 of the way to being an awesome hire, regardless of your experience level or pay grade.

Hey all, Robert Pearce here. I don't think there's enough room here to list the various positions I've held at Corsair in my 12+ years.

In fact my title has just changed again and I don't have a business card reflecting my new role yet but here's a link to an interview I did at CES a couple of years ago when I was handling PR. http://youtu.be/UPbAY0ynCTU

I cannot answer any questions about Ragnarok but based on my length of service at Corsair I fully expect to be here when it happens, assuming it isn't cancelled by FSM.

It's important to note here that almost all quality PSUs are either made by Seasonic or Enermax. PSUs are the hardest part to get right in a system because they don't always match up with the specs, but Corsair does an excellent job making sure they get good models before putting their name on it. It's a brand I regularly recommend on /r/buildapc .

I agree! Even the packaging on mine was amazing. The whole thing just screamed quality. I don't know much about Corsair when it comes to support(I've never needed it), but when I receive a product like this, it gives me a lot more confidence in the company.

George, just bought an H60 2nd generation Hydro cooler like 2 minutes ago lol, I have 650D case, what would you recommend me? to use only the fan that comes with the cooler, or use the one that came with my case as well in a push/pull config?

Seasonic is one of our manufacturers. CWT and Flex and Chicony are the others.

All products are modified from the "standard" versions, if they exist. Flex doesn't sell desktop PSUs so our designs are completely custom. Same with Chicony. Seasonic and CWT designs are heavily modified, for example, we may go from a single-layer PCB to a four or six layer, we may beef up capacitors or swap out fans to ensure the longer lifespan and performance characteristics we require.

How long does testing go for certain products you guys develop, such as cooling units, and power supplies? Is it a long process or pretty much just trial and error until it becomes stable?

How do you see the computer industry going in the future? It seems like major name brands, perhaps even your company who are producing products that we have no current need for because our video games don't require it.
This leads into another question: How do you base what your next product is going to be? Is it just from "oh time for a new upgrade?" to "hey this cooling unit will work perfectly with "X" processor. Or perhaps a new video game is coming out that may require a better product.

Thank you for all you do at Corsair, I own a Power Supply from you guys and got excellent support for it. =)

Depends. A new PSU takes around a year to develop and fully test through the various engineering verification, design verification, etc. Some of the things are more hard science-based - PSUs, you know pretty well what changing a transformer or addinga capacitor will do.

With cases there's a lot of trial and error in the cooling and noise level stuff, and even layout and buildability. Until you get it put together you never REALLY know how well it'll work.

As for the future of the industry, I think consoles have hurt the PC gaming and hardware industry over the past few years because PC games have been "dumbed down" graphically so that they could be easily ported to lower-powered devices like the Xbox 360 or PS3. However, I think that's changing, and I think that the "glorious PC gaming master-race" or whatever yahtzee called us will see a resurgence. I also think the Steam Box / Big Picture thing is a real threat to the way that consoles have operated.

For us, we work to make sure our hardware is compatible with numerous new technologies from our partners - if Asus has a new motherboard form factor, we put the screw holes on the motherboard tray in our case. If Intel has a new socket, we update the CPU coolers to be compatible. That sort of thing.

Our goal for every product is to make it better. The H100i improves on the H100 in just about every way, for example.

Recently purchased a keyboard, mouse, and headset from you guys really am enjoying them. Any plans on getting into any other part of the computer hardware department? Any new exciting products that we should be on the look out for ?

It took us a very long time to duplicate it, and then even longer to do root cause analysis. The issue was actually not simple to fix. It was easy to bandage with a step-down resistor to slow pump speeds, but that significantly affected performance, and wasn't a fix. So the actual fix took a while.

You're right though, we could have handled that way better. We learned a lot about it and our QC team put all sorts of new procedures in place to make sure it doesn't happen again.

You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It’s just common sense.

Who decided it was a good idea to leave a feedback loop on the Vengeance 2000 headset? When faced with complaints why is the response not to remove the feedback loop from the software and instead cite that it is designed? How did product testers fail to find out a ceiling fan would cause a user to suffer from constant white noise?

Also why does the Vengeance 2000 report itself to Windows as a stereo headset when it is advertised as being capable of 7.1? The similar but cheaper (wired rather than wireless) Vengeance 1500 reports itself as surround and so works with the surround sound in a larger portion of games.

Disclaimer: I don't work at corsair, I am however a software engineer and may or may not have stayed at a holiday inn last night.

The Vengeance 2000 headphones use the Xear 3D surround software. The Vengeance 1500 use Dolby Headphone 7.1. The Xear software works by taking a 2 channel sound and "upmixing" it to 7.1 (I would argue quite poorly). The Dolby Headphone 7.1 tech works by taking a 7.1 signal and running it through the Dolby Headphone algorithm to produce a 2 channel signal that will sound like surround.

Now you may be feeling a bit upset about this, well fear not! There are solutions:

Solution 1) Wait. Corsair has already promised at CES 2013 to release a new driver for the Vengeance 2000 that uses Dolby Headphone instead of Xear. This driver is expected in February of this year. If they love us maybe we will get it sooner...

Solution 2) Uninstall the Corsair drivers and enable windows own built in Virtual Surround. This produces a better and more even surround effect than the Xear tech does.

Do you think cases that work on the Solar Chimney principle, except of course that the draft is created by heat pipes transporting the CPU/GPU heat to the chimney walls, would be feasible commercially?

Have the 3M adhesive backing, but I haven't used them long enough in my personal system to know for sure if they come loose over time. They're very low profile though, and can be controlled even without the rest of the Corsair Link kit.

Hah! Oddly, these days, not as often. Far more often I see an idea on somebody else's case and say "Wow, that's insane. I can't imagine why that makes any sense at all." and then we buy the case and play with it and it breaks or doesn't work or is a pain in the ass to use and offers no benefit.

There are a LOT of gimmicks in the case market.

I do occasionally see designs that I think look great - I think the Phantom 630 that NZXT released this week is the best looking of the bunch, in my opinion. I really like the look of the old Silverstone TJ09 and TJ07. So from an aesthetic viewpoint, I see stuff I like often, but rarely do I see it on features.

Whatever, I am about to win this free iPad since I was the 1000th visitor. You are just jealous that you are not winning the iPad. That is why you don't want me to click on it, because you want to me the 1000th visitor and get the iPad. I am on to you IT guy. You can't fool me

Are there any plans to make a completely connected system using i-series parts? Maybe an i-series case? or other parts that can all be connected and controlled from the Corsair link software? Just a thought :P

No question, just wanted to say thanks for your excellent Voyager Mini flash drives in the rubberised slide-out shell? I'm terrible with backup discipline and realised I had all my recent work, a bunch of music ideas and important notes on the one I carry around in my jeans pocket... which had just gone through the wash. A night under the hot water tank to dry it out and it hadn't lost a single file.

Big fan of all of the Corsair line, in fact, the only thing I don't have that is Corsair that you actually make is the Obsidian 800D case I have been eyeing. Any new, crazy manufacturing stuff you can tell us about?

Yeah, check your pipes for scaling. You may be having a loss of flow due to closing of pipe apetures instead of reservoir drawdown. (The pressure shouldn't change but the flow out of a pipe can be deceiving about whats wrong).

If its the second, fuck it, I don't know, I just applied my general knowledge of geothermal systems (note: much more likely to scale). You're probably fucked.

I am happy to say that I own a corsair SSD, and I've been extremely pleased with it. You all have quality products, and I have been extremely pleased with my purchases.

My question is this: When will the SSD TRIM ability function with raid, or is that even possible? It would be amazing to see the read/write on a striped SSD configuration, but my knowledge is limited on whether what I'm suggesting is even realistic. Thanks for your time!

Is there any advantage to using corsair memory or does it just look cool?

Also I've had a terrible time with MMO/RTS mice. I had 3 bad experiences with the Razer Naga (I really liked the naga hex but like all my other Razer hardware it died far too early of a death and Razer synapse is a piece of garbage). Currently I am using a logitech g600 (which at least like other logitech hardware doesn't break after 4 weeks of use) but am not really happy about the ergonomics. Do you think I should give your m95 a chance or will it just end in frustration? Is there any showroom or anywhere I can put my hand on the M95 and see if I like it?

Corsair Memory looks cool, is guaranteed to overclock, and we do pretty rigorous quality testing. But even overclocked memory won't make your games noticeably faster. Games aren't usually bottlenecked by system ram speeds.

I don't know where you're located so I can't say anything about the M95 to check it locally. It's physically the same as the M90 on the outside. I think they're available at Fry's and Microcenter in the US.